Cool Tools for Streaming Production
Panasonic recently released the AG-DVX100B, the third incarnation of this camera. It has been called "the last great SD camera" because of the introduction of all the sub-$10K HDV cameras. If you’re not convinced by HDV (or Panasonic’s $6,000 DVCPRO HD camera, the HVX200), this camera offers a lot of professional features not found on other SD cameras in this price range, such as manual focus, iris/aperture, and zoom rings. Most of the controls have dedicated buttons placed where you need them, not hidden on some menu you have to click through. It has a pair of XLR audio inputs, and a gorgeous Leica Dicomar 10x zoom lens. It also offers true 30p and 24p modes, which goes a long way towards getting that film look. The only other camera offering 24p in a similar price range is the Canon XL2, but with a sub-$3K street price, the AG-DVX100B is around $1,000 less than the XL2, and therefore an excellent buy.
Panasonic’s $6,000 AG-HVX200, on the other hand, shoots 1080p DVCPRO HD rather than HDV, which means less compression and better color space. The catch? The HD modes generate so much data that they must be recorded to solid-state media, known as P2 cards. These P2 cards are pricey, but the price has come down precipitously since their introduction last year—down to about $1,400 for a card that holds eight minutes of HD footage in DVCPRO format—and you can expect them to continue to drop. The AG-HVX200 includes a tape drive for SD formats, as well as a wider range of variable frame rates and color space than most of its HD competitors. The availability of mountable hard disk recorders (an HVX200-specific version of the Focus FireStore FS-100 is the first) should make the value proposition a little better for this camera by increasing HD recording time considerably. Then again, Sony’s HDR-FX1 or HVR-Z1—or JVC’s GY-HD100, for that matter—will record compressed HD video to DV tape, something the Panasonic can’t do.
In other words, there’s no perfect HD or HDV solution out there, at least not at a price point that’s likely to appeal to the streaming production crowd. Of course, if you think HDV is overkill for streaming and podcasting applications, uncompressed HD takes this to a completely new level. 100Mbps provides some jaw-dropping quality, but obviously some of this is going to be lost on a streaming or podcasting audience. And compressed to streaming and podcasting bit rates, the difference between DVCPRO-acquired source material and video shot in HDV will also be negligible (some say it’s negligible to begin with). However, a lot of us aren’t working exclusively in the online world. Remember folks, this is the Digital Domain (see my fab new column in this issue) we’re talking about, and everyone and his brother is being conned into buying one of the new fancy, flat-screen 16:9 displays. Standard definition will be with us for a good while, but 16:9 is definitely here to stay. Time to start thinking seriously about making the move, particularly since it no longer requires a second mortgage.
Software/Hardware
We’ve also seen a number of cool software/hardware tools come out in the last year. NewTek’s TriCaster is a self-contained video production studio with encoding capabilities. For a full discussion, see the review I wrote when it came out. It’s a great package that offers a video mixer, clip storage, graphics, an audio mixer, and a whole lot more. You can output to a video master, to a Windows Media file or broadcast, or all three.
SunnySide Software recently released the RayCaster 1.6. Essentially, it’s a well-designed interface for the Windows Media encoder that offers additional functionality that most Webcasters would appreciate.
Telestream’s FlipFactory 4.1 has added support for the new QuickTime 7.0 audio and video codecs, as well as built-in iPod video format support. Telestream has also released Flip4Mac 2.0, which provides support for the Windows Media format on the Mac platform. Some folks on the StreamingMedia.com lists have been grumbling about the feature set of Flip4Mac (no WM10 support, no DRM support, spotty embedded player support). But seeing as how Microsoft is phasing out direct support for the Windows Media format on the Mac platform, coupled with the fact that Telestream seems dedicated to putting out upgrades in a timely fashion, I think we can agree that this bodes well for WM support on Macs.
Finally, On2 announced the Flix Studio, which includes Flix Pro, Flix Exporter, and Flix Power Players. Flix Pro is the standalone, full-featured version of their Flash 8 encoder; Flix Exporter is the add-on that that allows any QuickTime video editing application to export Flash directly from the timeline; and the Power Players set includes 135 different Flash players. The batch encoding alone should be worth it for any Flash professional that doesn’t have existing automated workflow ($379 from www.on2.com).
Conclusion
These are great times for digital media professionals. If you’re just getting started, you can get very good quality for a fairly minimal investment. For those of us who are producing to the highest standard, our dollar is going further and further as the quality continues to improve. The only problem is that it’s tough to make the decision to buy when you know that something better is inevitably a few weeks away from release. All in all, though, that’s a pretty good problem to have.